Cartagena Test 2009
February for 5 days in the sun to get to know the Honda RS125 that I'll be racing in the Relentless GP125 British Championship.
Honda RS125
is being provided by Kinpac Racing.
The Story So Far...
Stuff from Superteens, Metrakit and Minimotos.
Niall's Blog
BSB, Donington Park, 23/24/25 May 2009
On the run up to Donington there was some debate as to whether the racing would go ahead due to the ongoing building work for the 2010 F1 Grand Prix. The track was given an 11th hour reprieve and the BSB circus descended on the Leicestershire circuit on the May Bank Holiday weekend. We travelled down on the Friday evening and stayed at a local hotel before arriving well rested at around 8am the following morning to join the rest of the Kinpac team. We welcomed Stephen, a new member of Kinpac who has agreed to help out for the remainder of the season. Stephen is a real grafter and certainly took the pressure off Dad over the weekend.
The sun was shining and we were looking forward to the first practice session. Dad and George had worked on the bike over the last week so she was ready to roll. As you have probably learned form previous blogs is that nothing is certain in racing and this weekend was no exception. In spite of the meticulous preparation work we noticed a problem as we were warming the bike up. The engine was hot but the radiator was cold indicating that there was something wrong with the water pump. As it turned out the water pump gear had sheared. A quick sprint over to Steve Patrickson for a new gear and ten minutes later we were off and running again. I missed half of the first practice session which wasn't a good start to the weekend.
Things didn't get much better as once I got out on the track the Honda wouldn't rev above 10,000rpm when under load. This was a real mind boggler. We replaced just about everything to do with the electrics / ignition but still couldn't find the cause of the problem. The bike even stopped dead during one of the qualifying sessions on lap 1. We had morning warm up left to try something else otherwise there was no point in starting the race. Someone suggested looking at the map sets loaded on the BPS. As it turned out they were not what we expected and it looked as if they were corrupt. We downloaded the good maps from the laptop and fingers crossed the bike would finally run properly. The little Honda ran fine during the 10 minute warm up but it was little consolation as I had missed so much track time.
The weather had been faulous all weekend until about an hour before the GP125 race. We got underway in dry conditions but around the half way point there were some spits of rain and the race was stopped. Back into pit lane and on with the wets. Stephen and Dad got the wheels changed in jig time so I was ready for the 7 lap restart. It was a fairly uneventful race for me and I circulated near the rear of the field. My team mate Pete had a storming race and took 3rd place in the cup so it was smiles all round in the Kinpac camp. Next stop is Thruxton in a week's time so I'm hoping any luck we get is of the good sort and we can get our season started.
See ya.
Niall
